One hope I have when working with children
and families from diverse backgrounds is that they can feel they are understood
and welcomed. It is typically easy to look nice and exchange friendly conversations.
However, the roles of early childhood educators are deeper than being nice
around the children and their families. I hope to understand what their beliefs
are, what differences and discomfort they have experienced when dealing the
dominant groups, and what anxiety they have so that I can help the children to
develop positive identities and to be fully nurtured.
One goal I
would like to set for the early childhood field is to increase the number of
staff and teachers who are educated on anti-bias education. Anti-bias education
is very important because it affects healthy identity development. I believe
this is more important in the long run than teaching letters or math. However,
I feel that currently more and more time and interest are devoted to more academic
topics. That is why I set this goal.
To my
colleagues,
Thank you very
much for sharing your insights. I hope we all can become true anti-bias
educator and make changes in the early childhood field. Please let me know if I
can help you with something even after we finish our course.
Aya
Hi Ayako,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post. I agree that it is important to understand children and their cultures; their beliefs. I plan to have children to share important things about their cultures. I plan to invite parents to come in and share things about their culture as well. Good luck on your educational journey